The present invention relates to a management system and method for adaptively managing a communications network.
A communications network management system may be used to monitor the status of network elements in a communications network. Some communications network management systems allow an operator to control the status of certain network elements in the communications network to respond to alarms or to manage the functionality of network elements. A communications network management system may communicate with network elements on a polled basis to save telecommunications charges or to reduce the requisite channel capacity between the network elements and the network management system.
The network elements may be polled at successive fixed intervals. The fixed interval allotted to each network element may not provide sufficient transmission throughput to adequately monitor the real-time status of network elements if one or more network elements produce an overload of status messages or a high alarm volume. Thus, a need exists for improving the response time for the transmission of status messages or alarms from the network elements to the network management system.
The alarm traffic from the network elements may not be sufficient over certain periods of time to justify the channel capacity allocated between the network management system and the network elements. For example, the channel capacity for polling communications may be geared to satisfy a maximum anticipated traffic level from the network elements, that substantially exceeds an average actual traffic level from the network elements. During times in when no information is sent from a network element to the network management system or vice versa, an established idle communications channel between the network element and the network management system represents an undesired cost. Accordingly, a service provider may end up paying for communication costs commensurate with the maximum channel capacity used, instead of some actual lower channel capacity, which would suffice. Thus, the need exists for providing channel capacity over a polling system that is commensurate with the traffic activity produced by the network elements.
In accordance with a preferred embodiment, a method and system for managing a communications network provides a dynamically adaptive polling interval that is commensurate with the traffic (e.g., status messages) generated by remote network elements in communication with a network management system. The network management system establishes an initial polling interval for a corresponding network element. The network management system detects whether the network element provides at least one status message during a group of sequential polls. Each poll within the group is preferably separated by the initial polling interval. The network management system adjusts the initial polling interval to a subsequent polling interval for the network element based on the detection of one or more status messages to adaptively meet the communications traffic requirements.